In large herds of human revelers, one must consider and weigh each action carefully. Inadvertent glances can invite unwanted attention from the forward and eager, and what one second was a train of friends simply trying to navigate the crowd can instantly expand into a conga line hungry for a leader. Our species has come a long way over the millenia, but get us in a pack and throw out a beat and certain proprieties fly out the window.
Last Friday’s Cambridge Dance Party, an annual summer tradition that shuts down Mass Ave in front of Cambridge City Hall from dusk to near midnight, held these lessons and more for those seeking enlightenment. Young and old residents of Boston-Cambridge mingled with their neighbors (or stared uncomfortably at the minglers) and gyrated, bumped, crunked, bebopped and ostentatiously goth-scene-alt-emo-ed to Gaga, Queen, Cee-Lo and M.J. on what had hours before threatened to be a sodden shut-in night.
For reasons that escape me, Cambridge, Somerville, J.P. and the hipper burbs really get these kind of events in a way Boston tends to miss the mark. It’s not a superior caliber of people — the Bostonians that trickle out to public parties in metro-proper flood these outlying events en masse. And the might of a Boston City budget blows away the tech and organizational specs of Cambridge-and-company soirees. Sure Boston’s events draw crowds for July 4th fireworks or movies on the Esplanade, but they never really manage to mix people up any more than a movie theater. If public dance parties in Cambridge and Somerville porchfests entail their share of awkward eye contact or some (often unsolicited) touching from strangers, it’s because these are community events that require real participation and interaction. They’re not a service provided, some bright focal point to stare at for a spell in relative privacy and anonymity. At the end of the day, the Davids throw better bashes than Goliath could hope, because they ask and encourage the people who attend to do something — ask directions, grab the shoulders in front of them, cringe at the old couple grinding in the street.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_70zaVAhcqo
It’s the shared weirdness that makes us commonly human. So here’s to the summer of cheap and weird, to thrashing unceremoniously in the street to music you know only slightly better than that man giving you hungry eyes, to striking up conversations and rubbing elbows and toeing the bounds of personal space. We’re animals, cheapskates, and social ones. Let’s act it.
All slideshow photos by Shawn Musgrave.
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